Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–2make a beta-ray spectrograph, since they didn’t have one.GOODSTEIN: Had you made one?OPPENHEIMER: No, but I’d used one. I used the one developed by [C. D.] Ellis. That seemed agood thing because it was a hole in the Caltech nuclear physics facility.GOODSTEIN: How long did it take to build it?OPPENHEIMER: Well, I didn’t get it put together until about half way through my second year, Ithink.GOODSTEIN: You were taking courses at the same time.OPPENHEIMER: Yes. I had to build the amplifiers and design the magnet. There was a local placewhere we could get crescent-shaped magnets because they gave a somewhat better field. Theywere made in a forging place down south of Pasadena.GOODSTEIN: Did you actually go into the foundry?OPPENHEIMER: Yes. That’s why I know it was in my second year, because my wife and I wentand watched him, and they had lots of ovens all along with a little cart that went along, and aman with a fork would go over and open the door and take out the forging as he would a cake orsomething, look at it, and see if it was ready. If not, he’d put it back. It was beautiful to see that.[Laughter]The research I did was not terribly good.GOODSTEIN: Why do you say that?OPPENHEIMER: Well, because I thought I had licked the problem of scattered electrons in this byhttp://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F